August 1, 2020

A  mutual friend invited me on Facebook to a "coming out" party for a trans woman, also a friend. It  was today, socially distanced, at different locations and times. Joe said he would go with me. I waited until yesterday to respond and I declined. I'm just not comfortable going out anywhere at this point. Joe and I have been home with our cat for a month (I skipped out for two days in June). We usually order carry-out Saturday night, and I guess I'm in a rut. The idea of going to a party with other people, even distanced and masked, just seems foreign to me now. A few years ago, I was delighted when younger people invited me somewhere. At this party the people would have been 25-40, I'm guessing. That's a lot younger than I am, and where I used to be flattered, now I'm uncomfortable.

I've been preaching kindness online, and talked about "baseless hatred" as a cause for the destruction of the second temple, which  we commemorated at Tisha B'Av Wednesday night and Thursday. Meanwhile, a dear friend in Los Angeles has been inexplicably pushing  hydroxychloroquine as a cure  for coronavirus and touting Republican talking points. I've been shocked, and I finally told her she "needed to get help." She didn't take that well; who would? I went back and deleted that today. It's easy to say "Be kind  to everyone," but even with friends it's hard to do. I try not to have "rage" as my foremost emotion, but sometimes that is what is called for.

People are comparing this pandemic to AIDS, but then there were behaviors that could be avoided, once you passed the initial test. I spent a few years without sex before there was testing, not knowing if I was infected. Still, there is a lingering pain with me over friends who died, and I remember people saying it was worse than World War II, because there didn't seem to be an end. This pandemic is much more random than AIDS, and even more endless. There is no evidence that this virus will ever go away. At seventy, I feel that it's very likely, even if  I don't get this, that I won't live to see the end of it.

I've been keeping busy with my obsessions. I'm teaching a class about the music from The Brill Building in New York in the early 1960s, some of my favorites by The Drifters and composers like Burt Bacharach, Barry Mann and Cynthia Weill, Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman. I've spent an inordinate amount of time doing research and putting together strings of videos. They are on YouTube  at "Music From The Brill Building Week One" up to "Week Four" under my name.

I also have City Council where we are trying to hire a new city manager. I've tried to get a ban on evictions through, but others want to take  a "wait and see" pose, or think the Governor or the President should impose a ban (they should but they won't). We also have a homeless encampment where local agencies have worked to place people in housing. The camp keeps growing and we are torn between dealing with illegal activity at the camp, not spreading people out during a pandemic, and hearing some in the adjoining neighborhoods complaining. Anything we do will be criticized.

Joe and I get along well. We have too much in common, I fear, and I know we each have resentments against the other, but we  really have no one else, so we just give each other space. He has a sister, two brothers and friends in New York and California he talks to frequently; I have my sister. My best friends are in California, and I don't talk to them often. Last Saturday I called a close friend in California who doesn't do social media, and we spoke for a long time. Most days, it's Joe and the cat for me.

It's hard  to complain when money is not a problem, we have affordable housing (although it needs lots of repairs) and two cars. We almost never use both cars now. I'm not uncomfortable being home so much, and even that is scary. Why don't I want to be somewhere else?

I feel like the United States is over as a country. What will happen with the election, I don't know, maybe it will be good. As a teen in very racist suburban Baltimore, I knew that everyone wouldn't just get along because a civil rights bill was passed. And if Trump is defeated, the people still mourning the Confederacy or carrying Nazi flags will still be here. I know too much history not to be frightened for the future.

That's enough ranting for now. I'm still working on being kinder, gentler and happier. I wish that  for you who read this as well.

End of the Year and New York 2019

This year didn't totally suck, Friends from California visited us here in Morgantown: Jonathon and George from Long Beach, and Roy and Pat from Los Angeles, now living in Lompoc, in Santa Barbara County. We traveled to San Francisco and Los Angeles, where we saw our old crowds, and felt welcome, and just this week, we were in New York City for the first time in three years.We were in Memphis at Thanksgiving. On my own, I visited eleven of the twelve counties I planned to visit, four each in Ohio and Pennsylvania and three in Virginia. The largest and most interesting was Cuyahoga County, Ohio, including Cleveland. Many of the places I visited were economic dead zones, pretty towns with declining populations and abandoned business districts. I ran into a demonstration against abortion in DuBose, Pennsylvania, which infuriated me, and visited Bucyrus, in heinous troglodyte Jim Jordan's Ohio congressional district. I noted that it was warm in northern Pennsylvania in January and February, when it should have been cold. Virginia is pretty, Ohio has good libraries and Pennsylvania has extensive state parks. Most of these places are exclusively white and at least nominally Christian. I know people are in pain, but I still don't get voting for the awful Congresspeople they support. I have that problem here in West Virginia as well.

At the end of last year, Joe and I were talking about whether we wanted to stay in West Virginia. We are bicoastal people, at home in New York, Maryland and California. We have friends in big cities on both coasts, and we miss them. We have many homophobic people in our state legislature, and they showed it openly on several occasions this year, including an attempt to overturn Morgantown's non-discrimination ordinance. I told Joe I wanted to run for reelection to Morgantown's City Council just to prove it wasn't a fluke that I won. Ultimately he was offered and accepted a five-year contract to continue as rabbi at Tree of Life Congregation, so we are staying.

The congregation has been lovely to both of us and people have included us in their lives. Younger people have moved away and are difficult to replace. There were several funerals this year, and Joe spends a lot of his time visited hospitalized congregants. How long this congregation can continue is a question, but it's important that there is a liberal Jewish presence in this part of the world. Joe often speaks to non-Jewish groups, and I spoke to a high school class south of us about the Holocaust, and to pharmacy and counseling students at West Virginia University about "Jewish culture," even though I am unsure what that means.

My reelection turned out to be a joke. Two people originally challenged me. We had to turn in seventy-five signatures in our ward in January and February. I didn't get the help I had two years ago, although my friend Ash helped and neighbor Paul circulated petitions for me. One candidate turned in signatures in the last ten minutes of the last day. It turned out that many of his signatures were fraudulent, a fact discovered by a civic gadfly who thought there was something fishy about this guy, who had moved into the ward, to an apartment building owned by a real estate developer who has made his contempt for our Council clear, specifically to run against me. Why the City Clerk's office didn't catch the signatures that were the same as those on my petitions is a good question. Long story short, there was fraud, as far as I know unpunished, involving this candidate, who not coincidentally, had run for a statewide office as a Republican. The clerk's office and the Republican Party are up to their ears in this, but thanks to our Republican State Attorney, Mac Warner, from our county, nothing came of the investigation he supposedly conducted. The election was the end of April and for several weeks, it looked like I would be unopposed. Then the other challenger, on the Republican central committee in our county, signed up as a write-in. He ran a pathetic campaign, but still won 27% of the vote. I got 73%, but I was robbed of the challenge I wanted, someone with ideas I could debate and prove myself against.

Our big issue on Council was a proposal to annex a large unincorporated area of our County into  Morgantown. This is important for us to maintain the vitality of the city, to increase housing options and to make these areas more livable by providing police and fire services, zoning and building requirements. We were met by a barrage of criticism from real estate developers, business owners and some homeowner associations. We had meetings where some people brought up good questions, which we were able to work on, but mostly we faced off against powerful interests who have no interest in the community other than making a fast buck. We were also personally attacked by a number of people, making me question who we might actually want in our city. I've changed my shopping habits to try to buy more from merchants in our city limits.

 I look back at pictures of the victory of our "all-progressive" City Council when we were elected in 2017. We were happy and optimistic. That's gone now. Cracks have appeared over the issues of homelessness and drugs in Morgantown, and we have gotten no respect from the Chamber of Commerce (now called Morgantown Area Partnership), West Virginia University, and the Monongalia County Commission. We have five good people from our County in the State Legislature, but they are up against homo-haters, anti-abortion zealots, white supremacists, and people paid off by extractive industries from other parts of the state. It's tough. No knock against the new Councilors elected in 2019; I totally respect Dave Harshbarger and Zackery Cruze, and we are united on most issues. Still, I miss Ryan Wallace, who moved to Canada, where his wife has family. He was my closest friend on Council. And Mark Brazaitis, the Prophet, who was criticized relentlessly for his take on issues, didn't run again. He was right about everything. I have a year-and-a half to go on Council. I hope I can stand it.

I had a light bulb moment in New York Christmas night. People in West Virginia talk about how much they love this place: the beautiful scenery, the friendly people, the sense of place. It is pretty, away from the strip mines, the trash heaps and junk yards. Morgantown is a unique town, and there are many good people here. But I don't find most people here friendly, quite the opposite. So the moment came when we were out with family at Sammy's Roumanian Steak House, a famous Jewish spot on Christy Street on the Lower East Side. It's loud and crowded, in a basement, with raunchy jokes from the DJ/Comedian, Dani Luv. He asked where we were from, and he was shocked that we were Jewish from West Virginia. But I also knew that my great-grandfather ran a little store across the street from where Sammy's is, in the early part of the twentieth century, when my grandfather was a child. I felt a strong connection to that place. I feel that way in New York City generally, even though I never lived there. We visited often from Baltimore when I was a child, and my mother's parents, who lived in Queens, took me into Manhattan to see the sights. I get, more than I did before this trip, how people can feel attached to a place. It's an emotional and visceral thing.

In New York we stayed in Hell's Kitchen, once a rough neighborhood, and maybe still, to some extent. There were lots of gay clubs on the streets, and our non-luxury hotel was filled with people speaking foreign (to us) languages. We felt welcoming to them, and I tried to translate from Spanish for a couple who couldn't make themselves clear to the desk clerk. We walked quite a bit and took subways to most of our destinations. We weren't far from Times Square, absolutely mobbed at all hours. I like it, but I was sad that we are too old to enjoy the gay clubs, and that the people on the subway were almost all much younger than us. The stairs to the subways were daunting for me. Decades ago, I would have run up and down them; now I clutch the rail and walk slowly and carefully.

Joe's brother Henry, a musician, was in town from Louisiana and dragged us to Carnegie Hall to see Handel's "Messiah"with a small baroque orchestra and amazing soloists. While I might disagree with the theology, the music was glorious. I took Joe to see Pedro Almodóvar's stunning new movie "Pain and Glory," out of fear that it would never play in Morgantown. We walked around Greenwich Village that day. One day we visited the Guggenheim Museum, one of the last of Frank Lloyd Wright's masterpieces, on Fifth Avenue, to see an exhibit of Robert Mapplethorpe photos and those of people who came after and critiqued or imitated him, then we visited the Neue Gallerie, in a mansion down the street, to see German and Austrian Art, including Gustav Klimt's "Woman In Gold."

Just being in New York, seeing the 59th Street Bridge, the block where the album cover for Dylan's
"Freewheelin'" album was photographed, walking through Central Park and Times Square, places we could identify from movies and television, was great. We visited Joe's stepmom and went out with her a few times, and hung out with Joe's brother and sister, in from the South, and his half-brother, the notorious baseball collector and YouTube personality, Zack Hample. I saw two cousins of mine, one after forty-five years, because I made a connection with her adult grandchild on 23 and Me. A successful  friend of Joe's from Harvard came into town from Long Island with his husband and treated us to lunch at the fancy Harvard Club. Our last night in New York, we took the subway to Brooklyn to participate in the lighting of a giant menorah by Chabad in the rain on the last night of Chanukka. We wanted to show solidarity after the attack on Jews in Monsey, Jersey City and in Brooklyn.

I noticed that the temperature was well above normal for the last week of the year in New York City. It's not just weather, it's climate change, and it's here. The day we left there was a forecast of flooding in many areas around the waterfronts.

Of course, the trip was exhausting and expensive. We drove, and paid to park the car for a week, in addition to the hotel. I came back with a cold, and we had boarded the cat, who has been clingy and neurotic since we picked her up.

So, if you asked how I was doing, I would say I'm depressed about how things are going politically, for me personally on the city council in Morgantown, but also with the corruption and hatred generated by our state's Republicans and by the current administration in Washington, I turned seventy in 2019, so I'm a year older than my father was when he died. Of course I worry about my health and that of everyone in my generation. I feel left out of contemporary culture, like my time has definitely come and gone. Joe has been stressed too, and while our relationship is strong, it's been strained this year by the pressures we both feel.

I'm trying to be hopeful for myself and our country. I hope to build some bridges politically with other progressives, and be more understanding of those who think differently. I want to continue to travel, and to strengthen my marriage, shunning those who think it is illegitimate. I say this every year: I want to lose fifteen pounds (I lost five this year) , and declutter my house. May this be the year. If you've read to here, thank you for letting me rant, and may 2020 and The Twenties, be a healthy and prosperous time for all of us.

High Holidays 5780: How Terribly Strange To be Seventy

"How terribly strange to be seventy" is a lyric from Paul Simon, who turned seventy-eight last week. I wonder what he thinks about that now. I can tell you, it's not strange at all. It's just what happens when you just get up every morning, as I did this morning, on your seventieth birthday. I didn't just sit on a park bench, with nothing left but my memories. I ran/walked (ran downhill, walked uphill) through my neighborhood in beautiful, slightly-warmer-than-average fall weather.

The past month of Jewish holidays has taken a toll on both me and Joe. I chanted haftarah (prophets) the first day of Rosh Hashana, and Torah the second day, and Torah the morning and afternoon of Yom Kippur. In the Reform movement, today is Atzeret-Simchat Torah, the last day of the holiday period. In between everything else, Joe and I are teaching classes at Osher Life-Long Learning through West Virginia University. He is teaching "Old Testament Rituals-Don't Try These At Home," and I'm teaching "The Great Hits and Albums of 1967," fun for me, but a lot of work. We attended a wedding on the Saturday between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur in Alpine Lake, 40 miles east of here, near the Maryland line, and a bat mitzvah in Pittsburgh two days ago. Yesterday, we combined Simchat Torah with the Sunday school, then Joe had an unveiling near Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and spoke on a  panel later in the afternoon, followed by a dinner, through Greater Morgantown Interfaith Association. I spoke on a panel at WVU for counseling students Thursday morning, with a priest, a Dakota elder and our local Imam, then grabbed lunch before my own class. We attended a mourning prayer service Thursday night, for the mother and grandmother of congregants. This is in addition to Joe's regular services and my City Council responsibilities. I didn't expect to be so busy in retirement, and I'm sure it's not what Paul Simon envisioned oldness would be.

The kids at WVU asked about my history, and how I came to be religious and believe in God. I told them my story of coincidences in my favor piling up over time, and how I thought Someone had a plan for me of which I was not aware. I got kind of emotional about it all. At the evening service for Rosh Hashana, my attention wandered, and I saw myself as a child with my parents and at Passover seders with my grandparents, aunts and uncles, in Hebrew School and at high school dances, with my first boyfriend in New Orleans, and that time there was snow on the palm trees. I thought about how my grandmother loved me and worried about me when I lived in Miami, and the times I was sick there, about how I came to Los Angeles, my job issues and many career changes. I remembered again all the friends I helped bury during the worst years of the AIDS crisis: Fred and Art, Hal and the others whose names I can't bring up now, all these years later. I remembered how I wanted to meet someone and leave Los Angeles after I suffered a heart attack and my mother died a few weeks later. And then I saw Joe on the bimah leading services and said a quiet "Thank you, God." No one could have predicted fifty years ago that my life would be what it is now.

I still worry plenty about the climate, refugees, Israel, the United States, Morgantown, how long I'm going to live. I don't have any big, immediate worries. Physically, I'm as healthy as can be expected. I've started running, slowly and not far, after thirty-five years of not running. It's  a testament to the heart and asthma medication I'm on every day. Still, there are times when I am just exhausted, and no matter the time of day, I need to stop and go to bed. That happened Saturday, when we came back from the bat mitzvah in Pittsburgh, with a stop at Apple Butter Day at friends' farm in Mt. Morris, near here in Pennsylvania. 

When the kids asked me Thursday about my spiritual practice I told them the main thing is to say "Thank you, God." I do that when I wake up and when I start a meal, and at random times during the day. I extend that practice to being kind and compassionate to people around me (still working on that), charitable and generous in spirit. 

Joe bought me two t-shirts with funny things about cats for my birthday, and we'll have dinner out tonight. I'm speaking to another panel Thursday morning and my class continues in the afternoon.  At seventy, having lived longer than my father, grandfather and great-grandfather in my paternal line, I give thanks for my life today.

This is what 70 looks like

Panic and Grief

Things have been tough lately for a lot of people. The parents of a friend in California were evacuated from Santa Rosa because of the fires there, and may have lost their house. Many people in Puerto Rico are still without water, food and power weeks after Hurricane María blew over the island. In Miami, where I used to live, the main streets downtown were under water because of Hurricane Irma. And Hurricane Harvey in Houston flooded the city and poisoned the waters nearby when chemical plants were destroyed. A man in Las Vegas shot into a crowd at a country music festival. The whole nation is in crisis.

Then there is the current national administration. The President is clueless and vindictive. He models himself on Vladimir Putin. His henchmen, Mike Pence, Scott Pruitt and Jeff Sessions, are bent on destroying individual freedom, environmental progress, and the voting rights of many Americans. The President threatens a nuclear war with North Korea. That would likely be the end of all of us.

I was elected to Morgantown's City Council earlier this year. I was helped by people who are appalled at the clumsy stupidity and arrogance of our national government. In addition to approving bond sales for redevelopment, tweaking the city's codes and fixing the streets, we have signed Morgantown to the Paris Climate Accords, and will pass an LGBT rights ordinance next week. We are doing what we can to fight fascism in the United States. It looked like we would be attacked by bused-in anti-gay protestors, but so far that hasn't happened. Two weeks ago, while we were worried about this, the President was going to visit Morgantown, to be interviewed by Sean Hannity. Friends of mine were planning protests, and a motorcycle gang said they would come and protect the President. Meanwhile, the whole city would be shut down. I had visions of what happened in Charlottesville happening here in my town.

The President cancelled. He traveled instead to Las Vegas to meet with people injured in the mass shooting there. His party will block any attempt to stop the proliferation of weapons in this country. We are all just sitting ducks.

On a personal level, my life is good. I have a strong marriage; we own a modest house and two aged cars. We travel, and I will be at my fifty-year high school reunion this weekend. Suncrest, the neighborhood where we live, is suburban and leafy, but in the city of Morgantown, where I am the first openly gay man, the first in a same-gender marriage, to be elected to Council.

It's strange that what has most disturbed me this week is not any of the above. Last week, tree surgeons parked down the street from us, and started hacking off limbs  from a beautiful oak tree, still mostly green, and towering over a modern ranch house. At first, I thought maybe they would just cut a few branches. After a day, I saw five or six blue jays in the street by this house. Their nests must have been destroyed. I noted also, that some tree limbs were over the roof of the house, and that it was planted too close to the house. Actually, the house was likely built too close to the tree, probably fifty years ago. They cut the whole tree down. When I saw the workers there, I wanted to scream "Murderers!" at them, like I want to do with people who have NRA stickers on their car.

Maybe it's just that this tree was more visible to me than fifty-eight people shot to death in Las Vegas, or people without food and water in Puerto Rico, or the current EPA allowing the use of a pesticide known to have a negative effect on children's brains.  There's so much outrage over everything this administration has done in just ten months, that I can't process it. Instead I use the fallen oak tree as a means to process my grief and rage over every senseless thing that is happening in my country. That's what I think, anyway.

Movie Awards 2017

My last few years in Los Angeles, when Joe and I shared an apartment in West Hollywood, I stopped watching the big movie awards show. Roads were closed all over town, even to pedestrians, to make sure that, God forbid, a celebrity should run into a common person on the way to a post-award show party. I was at the movies at least once a week in L.A. (in Morgantown, once a year), so I had generally seen all the movies. I knew the nominees were the movies the studios wanted nominated, not necessarily the best.

I still keep a membership in SAG-AFTRA. In thirty years, I haven't made what I've paid in dues. So okay, I like to brag that I have worked, even minimally, in Hollywood. The SAG Awards are slightly more democratic, because it's only acting awards, and actors vote. Still, little-seen movies with great acting won't win.

This year, maybe because of the state of the world, or because a few movies got to me, I would have watched the show. We now have an actual television, but the network hosting the show can only be seen on cable from Pittsburgh. We don't have cable. We only watch DVDs on our new device. I asked on Facebook if anyone was having a viewing party (more popular than Super Bowl parties in L.A.), but I guess not.

SAG-AFTRA sends me DVDS or codes to watch things online. I saw "Moonlight" in Greenbelt, Maryland, "La La Land", "Jackie," "Manchester by the Sea," "Fences" and "Hidden Figures" on DVD. All of them were good.

I liked "La La Land." I've been to auditions where I've learned a speech and they stopped me after two words; my sister's husband, a jazz pianist, was once fired for improvising on Christmas carols. Los Angeles looked beautiful and dream-like, which it often is, just as it can be heartbreaking. For most of us, we found love there, but our careers didn't take off. Some of us left, and some stayed in jobs making less than they were worth in a city they couldn't afford.

"Moonlight" was more disturbing. All of us who are gay have had stunted lives because of hatred from society.  We've hid our real selves to get by at whatever we were doing. Often we don't stay where we grew up, but end up in Los Angeles, San Francisco or New York, where being gay is not such a big deal. I was blindsided by the prejudice I dealt with, even in Los Angeles. There is some redemption in "Moonlight," and that's when I was most moved.

I know people who didn't care for "Jackie." I was an impressionable fourteen-year-old when John Kennedy was assassinated, and to see a totally believable Natalie Portman deconstruct the legend of Jackie was beautiful and hard to watch. The horror of that time has not gone away.

"Hidden Figures" is an important, well-acted story that needed to be told, and although there was a book, the movie reached many more people. "Fences" is a classic American play, and Denzel did a great job directing it for the screen.

I found "Manchester By The Sea' disturbing also. I didn't like any of the characters, and I thought the women were even less sympathetic than the men, and underwritten to boot. Still, Casey Affleck was believable.

So I didn't disagree with all the awards. I might have gone for Meryl Streep or Natalie Portman for best actress, obvious choices, but I don't deny Emma Stone's fine performance.

I listened to all the songs online before the awards, and "City of Stars" was the one that made me cry.

Mahershala Ali was on "Fresh Air" on NPR. He talked about being a Muslim, and how he felt about the kid in the movie. He talked about being part of a community under attack, which he related to as a Muslim in America today, and he said he could see how gay people could feel that, too. I'm wildly paraphrasing here. It's touching to me that Muslims, gays and Jews have been brought together, mostly since the election.

After years of ignoring African-American actors and filmmakers,  I'm glad that a film like "Moonlight," not big box-office, and never playing in Morgantown, was recognized for the great achievement it is. The LGBT Center at WVU finally showed it last week at the college. That's not to take anything away from "La La Land," an excellent and heartbreaking old-fashioned (in a good way) film.

So I guess i am still, even marginally, in the "film community." I wish our two multiplexes here would show better movies. Often, when I am looking to see a good movie, I get Joe to go with me to Pittsburgh, because the good stuff isn't here.

If I had more of an entrepreneurial streak, I would restore and reopen the Warner Theater in downtown Morgantown and show art movies. Maybe the era for that has passed, but a man can still dream.

The New Reality

I was at John's Barber Shop in Star City yesterday. BJ, John's son, cut my hair. I like the small town feel of the place, even if local Republican politicians get their hair cut there, and the talk often turns to gun collections and what animals they killed during hunting season. I'm usually not there long; I don't think they are ever busy and I go in the afternoon before school is out and people get off work. And also, I don't have a lot of hair to cut.

Yesterday, BJ said "I'm guessing you don't think much of the new President."
I said "No, I don't like him at all, but I imagine you do."
He said " I'm giving him a chance."

I should have asked him what exactly he liked about Trump, but I didn't want to hear about keeping Muslims or Mexicans out of the country, or stopping abortion, making people on welfare go out and get jobs, or "it's just those people in New York and Hollywood" (code for "Jews"). Those are the answers one might typically get in West Virginia, along with everyone's favorite "He's going to bring back coal." I've only heard that once, from an actual coal miner wearing a "Make America Great Again" hat, in line at Sheetz, our local convenience store, before the election. I'm not sure many people around Morgantown actually believe that.

My friends are back in therapy, crying continuously, doing crossword puzzles instead of reading the newspaper, updating their passports. I see women in headscarves at Kroger looking distraught and speaking animatedly to each other in Arabic. West Virginia University has warned foreign students, especially those from Iran and Syria, not to leave the United States, for fear they will not be able to come back. Me, I call our US Senators' offices every day, asking them to block every nominee. Senator Manchin, our too-conservative Democrat, finally agreed to vote against Betsy DeVos, the nominee for the Department of Education, who plans to destroy the public school system.

In my travels around Appalachia before the election, I saw Trump signs in many of the dead and dying Appalachian cities and towns, often in the wealthier neighborhoods in places like Johnstown, Pennsylvania. I was reminded of the train trip Art Spiegleman's parents take to Switzerland before 1933 in Maus, where they are horrified to see Nazi flags in towns along their route.

Just in the last week, there was the ban on Muslims from several countries, the Holocaust Memorial Day, celebrating the liberation of Auschwitz in 1945, where the President didn't mention that it was mostly Jews who were killed there. I haven't heard yet about the National Prayer Breakfast this morning. Rumor has it he was going to release yet another Executive Order, this one freeing "religious conservatives," even government employees and health care workers, from serving people who they find objectionable. That would include me and my husband.

It's become clearer to me that my candidacy for City Council in Morgantown, in addition to issues like traffic, parking, crime and snow removal, has to include a statement about inclusivity. We have to confront this administration about the hatred and bigotry they have brought to the fore, and in West Virginia, Morgantown is the place to start. Our county voted 50.5% for the Republican nominee, but I suspect it was much less in our small city. We can set an example for the rest of West Virginia.

Things are happening in other cities here. There was a march against the Muslim ban in Huntington this weekend, and at least seven cities in the state have anti-discrimination ordinances on the books that include LGBT protections.

I commented on an article on Huffington Post January 31, where they went to Harrisville, a town in Ritchie County, eighty-five miles southwest of us, described as "Northern West Virginia." The five or so people they interviewed are all supporters of the ban. There are just over 10,000 people in Ritchie County. Harrisville, the county seat, has fewer than 2,000 people.I pointed out that people in Morgantown have protested against the Muslim ban, and that all of "Northern West Virginia" doesn't think like the handful of people they interviewed in Harrisville

The Washington Post sent someone to Accident, Maryland, population 325, only forty miles from Morgantown. Yup, the locals there like Trump, too. The media likes these colorful stories from small towns, but these people only represent themselves and not even all the people who live in those places. Meanwhile, more mainstream views from larger towns are less frequently expressed, and all of us in Appalachia are made to look like yokels.

I want Morgantown to be a center for inclusivity and compassion, in defiance of the national administration, if need be.  I pledge to work for that.

Manifesto: Morgantown City Council

I opened my campaign for City Council here in Morgantown yesterday. During my campaign for a seat in the House of Delegates last year, I made lots of friends, old and young, in the progressive community. Many people told me I would do better in the city than in the larger delegate district.

The Council has had some accomplishments in the last two years. With a decline in funding from the state, the city has raised money through levies for schools, transit and the library. There is now a three dollar weekly tax on people who work in Morgantown, not the best idea, but absent other funding methods, necessary. That tax and the levies have helped maintain our standard of living. Many of our notoriously bad streets have been repaved, the library (where I am on the Board of Directors) has increased hours and given employees a much-needed raise. The Council negotiated a deal with West Virginia University to get some tax money from the University's public-private partnerships.

Within the Council there have been two factions, one of which tried to have the other removed from office. That was a waste of time, and may have caused our last City Manager to leave. The Council voted unanimously for a new city manager, a good sign that the factions are able to work together.

I want to continue the good things in Morgantown. It would be great if we could get more money from WVU, from corporations and the state, and then be able to get rid of the weekly tax on workers. That will be difficult. I have friends in both Council factions, and I would hope to serve as a bridge between them, if the factionalism continues.

Morgantown, as home to an internationally acclaimed university, is not like other towns in West Virginia. We have a large Muslim population, including students and doctors. My dermatologist and allergist both have Arabic names. The University now has an LGBT Center, and has worked to make LGBT students safe and accepted on campus. I served on WVU's LGBT Equity Commission for more than two years.

In the West Virginia Legislature last year, and now with the new administration in Washington, our acceptance of diversity is under threat. I attend meetings of an interfaith group in town, and with my spouse, Rabbi Joe Hample, of Tree of Life Congregation, have attended meetings, along with many others from a variety of religious organizations, to support the resettlement of refugees. I spoke before the Council, with the full support of the Morgantown Library Board of Directors, in favor of a City Council bill to ban firearms in municipal buildings.

Morgantown is the progressive capital of West Virginia. In today's world, we have to compete with other college towns like Ann Arbor, Michigan, Charlottesville, Virginia and Athens, Ohio, for the best students and teachers, artists and tech firms from all over the world.  I want to make sure we are able to do that.

Contact me at rebnermwv@gmail.com or on Twitter @BarryLeeWendell.

The Boy Scouts and the Newspaper

I read our local paper, the Dominion-Post, every day. When my husband Joe and I first moved here in the summer of 2012, I applied to be on the Community Advisory Board for the paper. We attended monthly meetings where we were able to discuss the paper and give advice. I don't think our advice was ever taken. More importantly, each of us wrote a column for the editorial page every twelve weeks. I wrote five or six in my time on this board, and I valued that, because I leaned how to write something interesting and keep the length down.

I often write letters answering other letters, or sometimes about a particular event. Typically my letters are about same-gender marriage. I wrote about how happy Joe and I were when the Fourth Circuit ruled that West Virginia had to honor our marriage, and I have answered religious conservatives who love to write about how sex between men is an "Abomination." Like eating pork.

The editorials in the paper, typically written by Randy Vealey, the Opinion Page Editor, have favored same-gender marriage and gay rights. My issue today is with some of the other things that get published.

I once responded directly to Christine M. Flowers, who is a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News. Her columns sometimes appear in the Dominion-Post. She is openly antipathetic to gay rights. She wrote back (which surprised me, as other columnists have not done that), and compared me to the Taliban and someone who did not believe in the First Amendment.

Her latest diatribe is about the Boy Scouts' decision to allow LGBT people to be adult leaders. She is against it. Her column appeared in The Dominion-Post on Friday, July 31.

"Up until now, gay and lesbian employees of the Scouts were welcome to participate in all activities and at all levels, just so long as they didn't talk about who they were sleeping with," she says. I don't believe this was true, and if it was, that meant that a gay or lesbian person could never mention that they were in a relationship. She points out that her mother, a former Cub Scout den leader, never talked about her sex life. I'm sure she didn't, but the kids knew she had a husband, didn't they?

Gay people who want to be Scout leaders don't go into that to broadcast about their sex life. That's an obvious lie meant to denigrate gay and lesbian people, especially those of us in relationships and those who work with kids.

I don't really care about Christine M. Flowers. As she pointed out to me in early 2014, she has the right to say whatever she wants, even if she demonizes a large class of citizens with blatant falsehoods.

What I need to know is who placed her in my hometown newspaper and why? This is not just a "difference of opinion" but slander. And the consequence could be that I stop reading the paper altogether, or that I continue to work to make sure this kind of crap doesn't get published. She can say whatever she wants, but she doesn't have a right to be published.